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Shopping in Mauritius
| Textile | Handicraft
| Port Louis market | Ship
Models | Shops |
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Shopping Paradise |
| Mauritius nurses its reputation of
being a vast "shopping paradise". Duty-free
shops intended for tourists holding a
passport and an air ticket have been springing continuously in the
last few years and practiced prices are most attractive. |
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What must one then, bring back from Mauritius ?
Finely reproduced ancient ships models, built according
to their original plans can make beautiful souvenirs. But one ought
be careful to avoid bad fabrications. Women would prefer a jewel.
Jewelry has inherited a long tradition in Mauritius,
exceptionally at Moslems' and Hindus' skilled manufacturers and
excellent copiers, working with 18 or 22 carat gold - the quality-price
ratio can sometimes be most surprising. Most of those jewelers
also sell watches and apart from Rolex, all top
makes are available in Mauritius. Jewelers manufacture on demand
and deliver their products in hotels. |
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Textile |
There are thousands of shops but
beaches are literally invaded by pareo hawkers whose products must
necessarily be sorted out.
Very many makers' labels have their production units in Mauritius.
Once their allocated quotas have been exported, the left over can
be sold on the spot at prices which can hardly. Be beaten anywhere
else.
It is therefore a fact that shirts trousers, men's and ladies' suits,
shorts or bathing costumes cost two to three times less in Mauritius
than in Europe. It is also possible to have a suit made within 48
hours.
The gift chapter is also well arrayed. It is as easy to acquire
a fine painting in an art gallery, as to unearth some antique or
asian object. Going Bananas, or Interieurs. Besides, interesting
china it we can be found in the Port Louis Chinese quarter.
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Shells (imported and worked on the spot),
silk. material and duty-free perfumes are particularly interesting,
because of the rupee's parity as compared to foreign currency. Large
shopping centers can be found in Grand Bay, Curepipe, Quatre-Bornes,
Port-Louis. Rose-Hill, and shops in the airport and in hotels. Finally,
there is handicraft. Basket work (vacoas, raphia, aloe, rattan,
bamboo, banana-tree fibre, coconut-tree leaves and straw etc...)
embroidery, earthenware, silk screened fabric, cut stones.
Fine cuisine fans will be able to take away a colourful
range of various chilies, candied fruits and other spices or achards,
those special vegetable pickles, macerated in saffron oil and chili.
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Handicraft |
Handicraft which has always mirrored
peoples' degree of civilisation has a long history in Mauritius.
Marine carpenters who landed in Mauritius in the first sailing ships
have also been amongst those who built the very first timber colonial
dwellings. It cannot surprise anyone that the fabrication of the
same ship models are to-day, one of the most flourishing sectors
of a former lethargic handicraft which has woken up in the last
few years.
In Mauritian handicraft, one finds the same brew
of cultures and techniques issued from various countries, as one
is likely to meet in the field cuisine, art and literature. Such
fabrications as spices - introduced and cultivated by Pierre Poivre
around 1750 still survive to-day. Tourists are
fond of them and purchase important quantities of same in the warm
and cheerful atmosphere of open markets. Another small "craft
industry" is the fabrication of herbal teas, to which the popular
good sense grants about all the virtues.
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Port
Louis market |
| In the main Port Louis market, there
is a tiny specialised herbal teas and medicinal plants shop, which
reputation has travelled around the world. Cabinetwork was born
under Mahe de la Bourdonnais who brought highly
gifted cabinet makers from Pondichery. We owe them most of our beautiful
island's colonial style houses and furniture. With its spacious
varangue or verandah, its colonnade, pelmets, canopies, and pediments,
the colonial house witnesses a real and unique know-how; in other
words, a mauritian architecture produced by the fusion of many oriental
and occidental styles. |
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Basketwork is also one of the most ancient activities.
Vacoas, aloe, vetiver, sugar cane leaves, raphia, bamboo, all utilised
to make those special soft baskets (also called "tente"),
but also, hats, mats, lampshades carpets etc... The most active
sector being rattan furniture which technique, has been totally
mastered by the Mauritians. All types of arm-chairs, carriers, foot-lamps
are the proof of a lively creativeness and many hotels have chosen
that exotic furniture to evoke faraway islands.
Other fibres, seeds and straws - from acacia to
banana tree or from honeysuckle to maize leaves - are utilised to
manufacture all sorts objects, souvenirs or fancy jewels. Some embroidery,
all kinds of doll and earthenware workshops, flourishing industries
utilising lacquer as well as tortoise shell and a few stonecutters
complete with silk painters, the range of the mauritian "gift-souvenir"
handicraft. Jeweller)! known in Mauritius since the first days of
colonisation, has been in 1989, classified as one of the first priorities
in the field of industrial diversification. Around 5000 people are
employed in the Free Export Zone in jewellery (gold, silver, cut
diamonds) which cannot anymore be considered as a handicraft. |
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Ship
models in Mauritius |
Ship models have projected in the world, the
best image of mauritian handicraft. In 1970. the
first French Ambassador, Rafael Leonard Touze. highly impressed
by the skill of mauritian craftsmen, has decided to launch that
type of fabrication. The pioneer was a cabinetmaker called Jose
Ramar. There are to-day, dozens and dozens of similar workshops
in the island. The "timber navy" is therefore still a
source of fantastic dreams.
Ships
of all sizes and of all epochs, but especially those of the 19th
century which has witnessed the peak of timber naval construction...
There has first been a concise research of plans and documents pertaining
to those ships. Drawings, books, colourful stories and accounts
in french, Spanish and Portuguese museums have carefully been consulted
and reproduced.
The craftsmen operate with frequently rudimentary
tools in such species as camphor, teak, cryptomeria and a tremendous
amount of patience and know-how, have realised the exact replicas
of those ships which have been sailing in our juvenile dreams; casting
off from France or England to conquer the seas. The HMS Victory,
the Bounty, Le Superbe, Le Marseille, Le Saint-Geran - which sunk
on the east coast in 1744 and inspired his famous novel "Paul
et Virginie" to Bernardin de Saint Pierre) Bougainville's La
Boudeuse, Surcouf's Le Revenant, La Perouse's La Boussolem, the
Waffen von Hamburg, the Astrolabe, the Wasa, the Coureur: a long
story which files past, all sails unfurled, of those timber vessel
models some of which are made, of thousands of tiny components assembled
during weeks and weeks of labour. And which labour! Cutters, bricks,
caravels, galleons, frigates, schooners and sloops spring from expert
fingers of men for the timber work and of women for the sails and
rigging. Starting from the initial drawings, the hull is made, a
wooden skeleton covered by thin lathwork. Then, it is the meticulous
assembling of the superstructure, of the battery of artillery, the
deadlights, the top deck, the forecastle, the poop deck. Generally
speaking, the aftercastle, a richly decorated part of the ship is
carved out of a block... Then com the masts, the gins and all the
technical details common to all those ships: shroud bearers, pulleys,
rope ladders giving access to the crow's nest. Some models have
up to three to four decks and 120 guns. Finally come the yards together
with their rigging wrapped up in their sails which fabric is soaked
in tea for the colour.
Touching up, alterations, corrections of minor defects are still
time consuming together with minor details which will give to the
model its final touch of "truth". When it is all over,
the ship is finally ready to cast off for the ocean of our memories.
Crafts shops in Mauritius
are located mostly in towns, in the market place. But there are
other places where they are displayed. In all the markets, you'll
come across a section where baskets, hats, shells or corals are
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Shops |
Shops can also be found in shopping areas and
near beach resorts. Le Caudan Waterfront Arts and Crafts
Market offers a wide variety of products like model ships,
sculptures, paintings, baskets, hats, etc. Mauritius
has made itself a reputation in the building of model ships.
These miniature wonders, built to scale of the original plan, have
every detail reproduced to perfection.
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